Medic One Funded Projects

Edinburgh Blood Project
Prehospital Blood Warming

In April 2015, The Edinburgh Blood Project Group led by Dr Matt Reed, received £4520 from Medic One to purchase two Belmont Buddy Lite blood and fluid warming systems along with batteries and giving sets. The Buddy Lite system is one of the leading systems for warming blood and fluid in the pre-hospital environment and is used by many pre-hospital services in the UK. The system is a battery operated, lightweight portable device that the Medic One service will be starting to use during the coming months as part of the introduction of pre-hospital packed red blood cells to the service. A blood fridge has been fitted in the Medic One cupboard in the Emergency Department at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, in which will be placed an Avatherm A10 blood carrying box containing 2 units of packed red blood cells. When a trained physician and nurse respond to a pre-hospital major haemorrhage trauma patient in Medic One, there will now be the opportunity to transfuse the patient with packed red blood cells at the roadside. Despite the lack of high quality evidence to support this intervention, we know that poor packed red blood cell to fresh frozen plasma ratios increase mortality eight fold, and that a third of patients who come to the Emergency Department are already coagulopathic leading to a five-fold increase in mortality. Training both medical and nursing staff has already commenced and it is hoped that this intervention along with the recently introduced Code Red protocol which improves the speed of access to blood products once a patient arrives in the Emergency Department, will help improve mortality and morbidity in the trauma patient group that Medic One attends.

Matt Reed
Chair Edinburgh Blood Project Group